Wine Recommendation
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Wine Recommendation

Mission Hill Winery 2005 Reserve Pinot Noir  (Okanagan Valley)

Mission Hill Winery

2005 Reserve Pinot Noir
(Okanagan Valley)



John Winthrop Haeger, in his superb 2004 book, North American Pinot Noir, remarked enigmatically that Mission Hill’s management was “at the point of trying to decide ‘whether to get really serious’ about Pinot”. The winery should send him a bottle of this 2005 Reserve. Mission Hill is now sourcing Pinot Noir from three different regions in the Okanagan, as well as from several clones. Now, the winemaking team has the tools to build a serious Pinot Noir.

This wine begins with the immediate eye appeal of a jewel-box ruby hue. The aroma combines cherries and really ripe strawberries. This follows through to flavours of plum and cherry, leading to a spicy finish, attributable at least in part to the 14 months the wine was aged in French oak. The texture is sensuous and silky. 88 points.

Reviewed November 15, 2007 by John Schreiner.




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The Wine

Winery: Mission Hill Winery
Vintage: 2005
Wine: Reserve Pinot Noir
Appellation: Okanagan Valley
Grape: Pinot Noir
Price: 750ml $29.99

Review Date: 11/15/2007

The Reviewer

John Schreiner

John Schreiner has been covering the wines of British Columbia for the past 30 years and has written 10 books on the wines of Canada and BC. He has judged at major competitions and is currently a panel member for the Lieutenant Governor’s Awards of Excellence in Wine. Both as a judge and as a wine critic, he approaches each wine not to find fault, but to find excellence. That he now finds the latter more often than the former testifies to the dramatic improvement shown by BC winemaking in the past decade.